


Through the Years

by dollylux



Series: Fic Advent Calendar 2015: Siblings, Husbands, Lovely Ladies, and Other Miscreants [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas Decorations, Christmas in the Bunker, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Sam Loves His Big Brother So Much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He gives thanks to God every single morning and every single night for each line on Dean’s face, for every tiny silver hair on his head. And that’s a secret he doesn’t mind keeping from Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kelios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelios/gifts).



> day nine | prompt: silver and gold

“Question.”

“Shoot,” Sam says into the phone where he’s still sprawled out in bed, completely naked and well-used by the man he’s currently talking to.

“If you had to guess,” Dean starts, sounding distracted, “how tall would you say the ceilings in the library are?”

Sam frowns at the ceiling, his fingers paused in their drag through his own happy trail.

“...Why?”

“Like twelve feet? Maybe fifteen?”

“Dean,” Sam ventures cautiously. “What are you doing?”

“You’re right. Probably twelve.” There’s some shuffling on the other line and the sound of another guy’s voice along with Dean’s.

“Dean.”

“Be home soon, you better have dinner started.”

“It’s not dinner time!” is the only thing Sam can think to say.

“It’s after four, you sex-soaked hooker!”

Sam scoffs, about to come back with a very snappy rejoinder, but one glance at the clock on the nightstand confirms what Dean said.

“Fine,” he mumbles.

“Later!” The line goes dead, but not before he hears Dean say to someone, with a dismissive laugh: “The wife. You know how women--”

“Dick,” Sam mutters, tossing his phone back on the nightstand and curling back around the pillow that smells like Dean.

 

He’s ripped out of a very pleasant dream about the kid who left One Direction by the sound of his phone ringing. Again.

He fumbles for it on the nightstand and sits up this time, wiping the sleep out of his eyes and pushing his hair back from his face. He hits accept and shoves the phone to his cheek.

“Yeah?” he says around a yawn.

There’s a pause.

“You outta bed?”

Sam stands up on wobbly legs, still a little sore from sex last night. And this morning. And this afternoon, before Dean left to run errands.

“Yes,” he says, now technically not lying.

“Another question.”

“Okay.” He shuffles out of the room and down the hall toward the kitchen, all the lights in this place just too fucking bright.

“Do you like the plain white lights or the multicolored kind?”

Sam stops walking and frowns down the long hallway, blinking blearily while he processes the question.

“ _What?_ ” he finally comes up with.

“Christmas lights, Sammy, Jesus,” Dean sighs, his exasperation huffing clearly through the phone’s tiny speaker. “Regular or rainbow?”

Sam smirks.

“I don’t know, Dean, you big queer--”

“Hey,” Dean interrupts, probably glaring, “I’m not gay.”

“You’re not straight either,” Sam reminds him.

“What do you call somebody who just gets it up for one person?”

Sam, being alone as he is, allows himself to smile all adoring and bashful in a way he never would if Dean was standing in front of him.

“Are you still carrying that torch for George Clooney?” Sam asks, his voice gently teasing but mostly just soft, touched. Dean snorts, probably smiling just as dumb and lovesick as Sam is.

“Shaddup,” Dean says, just as quiet. “C’mon, the lights, babe. Tell me.”

Sam wants to say _whatever you like_ because he honestly doesn’t care, but he knows how much Christmas means to Dean, how much he considers it a participatory activity and how hurt he gets when Sam removes himself from the festivities. 

“The clear kind,” he finally says, making his tone decisive. “I’m a classic kinda guy.”

“Vanilla,” Dean retorts, but he seems pleased.

“That’s not what you were sayin’ last night,” Sam replies, grinning when he finally steps into the kitchen and flicks on the light, finding the chicken already defrosting on the counter.

“Mm,” Dean rumbles in his ear. “Stop bein’ hot when I’m so far away.”

“Then come home. I’m makin’ you dinner.” They’re using those little intimate voices they only use with each other and only when they’re feeling extra close, extra lovey, when they feel so much like a married couple that it would probably disgust anyone who witnessed it, and not just because they’re brothers. 

Sam kinda loves it.

“Be home soon. Be prepared to help me drag this monstrosity of a tree into the house.”

Sam drops the cutting board onto the counter with a clatter.

“What?!”

“Byeee!” Dean sings into the phone. The line goes dead.

“ _Dick_ ,” Sam says again, but more emphatically this time.

 

Dinner (just roasted chicken and potatoes, and asparagus that Sam can trick Dean into eating if he adds enough butter) is ready by the time the door opens at the top of the stairs, and the deafening sound of a tree being shoved in through a too-small door makes Sam go running into the library and looking up at the balcony where he sees the pointy top of a tree being birthed into the bunker.

“We might need to fashion some kinda pulley system!” Dean says from somewhere behind the tree, still outside.

Sam sighs, unties his apron, and heads up the stairs.

 

“There,” Dean says with a pleased little grunt, taking a step back from the truly gigantic tree that has just a foot or two of clearance before it reaches the high ceiling in the library. Dean unearthed a ladder from somewhere and spent an hour stringing lights around the tree, going excruciatingly slow, making sure he distributes them evenly all the way around. He turns to look at Sam who is sitting at one of the tables in front of two plates of food and two slightly warm beers. “Whaddya think?”

“I think dinner’s cold,” Sam replies, maybe being a little bratty. He looks past Dean at the tree anyway, at the golden glow the lights cast on the whole room.

“Sammy,” Dean sighs, his shoulders drooping. Sam can tell he’s tired, probably hurting from all the lifting and moving, and he’s sure as hell hungry because, well. He’s awake. “C’mon.”

“It looks good, Dean,” he admits, his voice softening. “It looks really good.”

Dean grins at the tree, hands on his hips.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

Sam rolls his eyes, his smile digging a dimple out on his cheek.

“C’mere and eat, Father Christmas. I’m not reheating it again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean grumbles but he obeys, crossing the room and leaning over when he gets near it to press a kiss to Sam’s awaiting mouth. Their foreheads stay pressed for just a second, Dean’s breath washing over his face, the most beautiful smell in the world because it is nothing but familiar. “Thanks for dinner.”

Sam smiles in response, watching out of the corner of his eye as Dean settles in and grabs up his fork, digging into the potatoes first and taking a savoring bite, letting his eyes fall closed as he chews.

“Mm-mm,” he says with his mouth full. He swallows and licks his lips, cracking an eye to look over at Sam. “Better’n sex.”

Sam scoffs, his face twisted up in dramatic annoyance, but he can barely keep it up long enough to spit out his offended “ _Hey!_ ”

Dean just grins at him, so fucking cute and so fucking charming, his boot knocking against Sam’s still socked foot under the table. 

They eat by the surprisingly romantic lighting of the Christmas tree, and Dean watches it as he chews, half-admiring and half-inspecting his own work, Sam can tell. He watches Dean--the greatest show on earth--in the low, gold light, quietly cataloging him; the very slightly deepened laugh lines around his eyes and his mouth, the worry creases on his forehead, the top secret gray hairs around Dean’s temple that they Do Not Talk About but that Sam finds so sexy that he can barely keep his hands and mouth off of them.

It’s a miracle, really, that those gray hairs exist. That Dean is old enough for them to exist, that he’s alive to age at all. That he’s pushing forty and his face is aging, is getting so delicately lined by time, that he didn’t die young like they always thought, wasn’t frozen forever by some tragic and sudden end, wasn’t left with a smooth, nubile young face and a plush, unlined mouth and joints that didn’t ache and creak with the weather and with work that used to come so easily but now leaves him hurting.

Sam knows that tonight Dean will take a shower as hot as he can stand it and that he’ll come to bed and bare his back to Sam, silently asking Sam to use his big hands to rub out the knots from the muscles of his back and shoulders, a task Sam will do with almost embarrassing indulgence. He will massage Dean’s arms and his legs, his feet and even his hands, his life-worn hands that Sam could draw with almost hyperrealism straight from memory, at any minute of any day. 

He wordlessly worships all of those things about Dean, all of the tiny reminders that he’s getting older, that he’s _alive_. He keeps a running mental list of all those little changes and pours over them when he gets scared, when it gets too dark in his mind.

He gives thanks to God every single morning and every single night for each line on Dean’s face, for every tiny silver hair on his head. And that’s a secret he doesn’t mind keeping from Dean.

“What? Do I got food in my teeth or somethin’?” Dean asks, pulling Sam back to the present. He blinks, realizing that he’s been staring at Dean, a probably cold forkful of chicken and a potato hovering just above his plate. Dean is chewing on a spear of asparagus, miraculous as that is, his eyebrows raised while he waits for Sam to reply.

“Nothin’,” Sam says with a shake of his head, finally eating the food from his fork just to busy his mouth, but Dean’s smiling at him like he maybe knows anyway.

 

They decorate the tree after dinner, their bellies full as they take turns climbing the ladder and placing ornaments all over. Sam follows Dean’s directions, amazed at how good he is at this, at what an eye he has for color and balance and composition. Dean could have been an amazing artist in another life, maybe. Dean could have been so many things, in so many different lives.

Dean puts a star (“because fuck angels,” he had said) at the top last; a bright gold one that shimmers in the lights twinkling beneath it. 

They drink a couple more frosty beers straight from the fridge as they admire their work, the tree full to bursting with ornaments and tinsel and little starry lights.

“Looks amazing, Dean,” Sam tells him, and he means it.

“Hey, seriously though,” Dean says out of nowhere, his beer paused halfway to his mouth. He turns to look at Sam. “What do you call somebody who only wants one person? Who only… who only sees you?”

Sam smiles, sliding up behind Dean and wrapping his free arm around him, pulling him back snug against his body and pressing a kiss to Dean’s jaw, to the lovely, scruffy curve of it. He squeezes gently at Dean’s stomach, at the slight softness there, smiling for the feel of it.

“Mine,” is Sam’s reply.


End file.
